Who owns digital transformation within your organization? Is it the C-Suite, marketing, IT, HR? It’s now essential for all stakeholders – no matter their level or role – to become acquainted in the purpose of digital technology if orgs are to succeed in this new economy. We live in an era of digital Darwinism. As technology and society evolve, all organizations must also adapt how they operate and compete. To do so however, requires much more than digital transformation and…
Is Retail Dying or is it Time for a Renaissance?
Guest post from Michel Lewis (@BizMike), founder of RoomSignal and long-time friend of Brian. Retail is dead. Heard that phrase before? For the last decade we have watched as digital companies like Amazon & Netflix received much of the credit, for putting brands like Borders and Blockbuster out to pasture. Poor stock performances and gloomy headlines about the death of retail only fuel reports about the demise of brick & mortar stores. For many retail brands like Nordstrom and Target,…
Conversation Prism 5.0: The 2017 Social Media Universe in One Infographic
Social media continues to reshape our world and how people connect, discover and share. While some argue that we should drop “social” from the moniker and simply call it “media,” the reality is that social media is only spreading, evolving and becoming more pervasive in our life and work. Every few years, I partner with JESS3 to capture the state of social media visually. The challenge is always great in that social networks and apps come and go, but over…
A Real-Time Conversation About AI and the Future of Work
I recently had one of the most fast-paced, fun and provocative conversations I had in a while. It wasn’t something that happened in IRL. Instead, this real-time conversation took place on Twitter. Organized by Cognizant and Pega prior to #Pegaworld, I joined Ben Pring, author of What To Do When Machines do Everything as well as Cogizant and Pega executives and AI/FoW experts on Twitter, to discuss the unfolding reality of AI and its role in the future of work. And, more importantly,…
Why your website (and CX) suck and how to better engage digitally-savvy consumers
I recently had an opportunity to speak with Juliet Stott of Content Magazine about the impact digital has had on marketing, how customer experiences can help marketers differentiate their brands, and why websites in general, suck. It was such a fun and revealing conversation, that I wanted to share it with you here. I hope it helps you! Content: What has been the greatest disruption to marketing, and what impact has it had on the industry? Brian: Social is one of the disruptions,…
It’s Time to Bring Digital Literacy to the C-Suite: An Interview with Paul Miller of the Digital Workplace Group,
I think the next big thing following massive innovation on the CX front is EX…employee experience. But, to do so requires a level of inward empathy not usually found roaming the halls of the C-Suite. This is something though, I believe, will become more pronounced as the move to customer-centricity is more closely linked to employee-centricity. To do so however, requires that companies empower employees, giving them access to information, expertise, and the reward mechanisms they need to innovate and…
X Marks the Spot Where the Medium is the Message
Several years ago, I embarked on a crazy journey to reinvent the book to make it a physical metaphor for the purpose of the book. I had no other choice. It was a book about designing meaningful and personal experiences in a digital economy. It would have been to ironic to tell you do do so in a traditional print format. It also would have been unimaginative to simply release an ebook or app. The point is that you can’t…
Experience Happens: Design What You Want People to Feel
“Experience” is one of those words that is both aspirational while also meaning something uniquely different to each person who uses the word. No matter who you define it, the important thing to remember is that experiences lie in the value of the beholder. The reality is that experiences are something you feel, you sense, and they’re defined by the people experiencing them. Whether they’re amazing, meh or terrible, they’re either forgotten or they turn into memories. Either way, reactions…
Designing the Experience: My Ongoing Experiments with Book Trailers and Storytelling
I’ve always been fascinated by Hollywood trailers. So much so, that 10 years ago, I was determined to develop a trailer for my next book at the time, Engage!. Since then, I launched every subsequent book with a trailer. You can see a compilation here. With my latest book X, I broke that tradition. It wasn’t intentional however. I simply got so caught up with the launch and the following book tour that I couldn’t get to it. That didn’t…
Crossing Over to the Darkside of Digital and Seeing the Light
“Yesterday is not tomorrow; we can’t innovate, we can’t do new things by opening old doors.” Paul Miller spends a lot of time thinking about the future of work. In fact, he wrote a book on the subject, “The Digital Renaissance of Work: Delivering digital workplaces fit for the future.” I greatly respect Paul’s work and I’ve been lucky to know him for quite some time now. In fact, I was honored to write the foreword to his book. Following that, Paul…
